AnyBar is an OS X menubar status indicator that displays a colored dot controlled via UDP messages.
The tool solves the problem of needing a simple, always-visible status display in the macOS menubar. It works by listening on a UDP port for commands that change the appearance of a small indicator dot. Once launched, any process or script can send messages to change the dot's color or style, making it useful for displaying build status, system health, or any other binary or multi-state condition that benefits from persistent visibility.
AnyBar suits developers who want lightweight status monitoring without building custom menubar applications. It works well for CI/CD pipelines, development tool integrations, or system monitoring scripts that need to communicate status back to the user. The tool is particularly valuable for teams using shell scripts or automation tools, as it can be controlled from bash, zsh, or fish with simple one-liners. The README documents numerous client implementations across languages including Go, Node, Python, Ruby, Rust, and others, indicating broad ecosystem support for integration into different workflows.
The project maintains a stable, minimal codebase with infrequent updates focused on compatibility with macOS system changes. Recent work addressed Big Sur's dynamic menubar appearance by introducing filled and hollow dot variants that automatically invert with system theme changes, showing responsiveness to platform evolution rather than feature expansion.
